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Why you shouldn’t watch Narcos

If you don’t know, Narcos is a Netflix series about the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar and the Medellín cartel.

To demonstrate why you shouldn’t watch this series, I propose the following thought experiment.

Imagine the worst day in the your country’s recent history. A day that involved multiple tragic deaths, for example. Now imagine that day repeated over and over again for several years. Imagine that you lost someone you loved or admired on one or several of those days.

Now think about what your country is famous for around the world (whisky, men in skirts and the Loch Ness Monster, in my case). Imagine that your country is only famous for one thing, the production and export of an illegal drug. You know that your country is much more than that, that it is beautiful and rich in culture and resilient people, but everywhere you go around the world people will always ask first about that white powder and the war in its wake.

Finally, imagine that a group of mainly foreign actors and producers decide to make money by depicting on screen the most violent episode of your country’s recent history and focusing, not on the victims, but on the main perpetrator.